


Breaking Down Like Fractions

by Flyting



Series: Interrogator!Ben/Hux [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Community: tfa_kink, Flirting with the enemy, Gen, Hux is a snarky bastard, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Interrogation Fic, Jedi Ben Solo, M/M, Mind Rape, Promptfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 08:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6416833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flyting/pseuds/Flyting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the TFA-kink prompt: <i>AU where Ben Solo never became Kylo Ren, but he's still the same man who *could* have become Kylo Ren. He's prone to fits of temper, he's very strong in the Force, and... he's a Jedi. He's developed a soft touch on people's minds (because Uncle Luke is so disappointed when he's mean to prisoners, although Uncle Luke is disappointed in him anyway) and he's the Resistance's interrogator of last resort.</i></p><p>  <i>And then the Resistance captures a prize: General Hux of the First Order. He's building a base somewhere that can destroy an entire star system at once. And Ben is the only one who can find out where it is.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Three sharp buzzes on the base comm system signals the return of fighters from a raiding mission.   
  
As far as covert forays into enemy territory went, it was fairly routine. A high-risk mission, stealing supplies and intel from First Order controlled Axaca. Nothing they hadn’t done before.   
  
The ships land and their transport containers of stolen goods are unloaded to be sorted and catalogued. It’s a crapshoot what they’ll get on any given raid. The Order keeps meticulous records, of course they do, but even their cargo manifests are password protected. The best the Resistance can do is grab whatever's left unattended and hope it’s something useful. The things they manage to get away with are either kept, if it’s useful, or sold off under the table if it's not. It had even become a game among the Resistance pilots. There were regular betting pools on what they would find when they cracked open the transport containers. Last time, they had ended up with two crates of emergency rations, some expensive spare parts for a Star Destroyer’s targeting system, and an entire pallet of Stormtrooper helmets.   
  
Ben Solo and Poe Dameron had hung the helmets up all over the fighter hanger like weird party decorations. They practiced taking potshots at them when they were bored.  
  
As the newly-returned pilots disperse, heading for the cafeteria or the refreshers, rumor slowly filters through the base, subtle and silent as smoke.   
  
They have a First Order General in custody.  
  
The hows and whys depend on just who’s telling the story, but the consensus points to the Resistance forces having turned a bad situation to their advantage when they found themselves in the wrong place at the very wrong time during a routine inspection of the Axaca industrial export facilities. Aeryn Leth was telling anyone who would listen how they had stolen Stormtrooper armor and impersonated the General’s personal guard in order to escape the facility. He also said that he’d personally punched the General in the face and blown up a dozen TIE fighters. Poe Dameron told a different story, but he did agree about the Stormtrooper armor.  
  
Word slowly makes its way around base. General Organa is abruptly summoned from a meeting. One of the lower-level storerooms is hastily converted into a holding cell.   
  
The Resistance did not, as a general rule, take prisoners. They certainly didn’t abduct First Order Officers and cart them halfway across the galaxy in order to hold them hostage. It was a waste of space. A waste of manpower. The fact that they’re bothering at all, that the entire facility is swarming like an insect hive trying to take advantage of this situation, suggests that there must be something bigger going on here.  
  
When the news eventually makes its way to Ben Solo, he smiles to himself and waits for the call. 

* * *

  
  
It comes later rather than sooner. It’s been a day and a half since word got out about their captive. Half the base, Ben included, is already asleep, when the summons comes to meet his mother in the empty store-room in sub-basement four. He rolls out of bed, dressing mechanically in the dark, trying to tame his hair by carding his fingers through it until it lies flat, and responds that he’ll be there in five minutes.  
  
She is waiting for him at the end of the hall when he steps off the lift. Ben nods his head in acknowledgement. Behind her, two armed guards flank the door to the room.   
  
“He’s worth a lot to the First Order. We need to keep him in one piece,” she says without preamble.   
  
“Have a little faith in me, mother. I’m the family disappointment, not the family disgrace.” It is just a little too serious to be a proper joke, and he regrets it almost immediately. He isn’t at his best half-asleep.  
  
“You’re not a disappointment,” She says patiently, straightening the collar of his shirt where he had dressed too hurriedly, smoothing it flat.  
  
“Tell that to Uncle Luke,” Ben mutters.   
  
“Luke thinks you push things too far. That you stray too close to the dark side.” General Organa pauses. “Normally, I agree with him.”  
  
“Normally,” Ben repeats. He knew what was coming. A sin was a sin, until it was a useful sin.   
  
“Right now I think I’ll take whatever I can get and be grateful for it. We need to know what they’re doing on Axaca that justified a personal inspection from the General. We’ve been intercepting shipment after shipment of industrial supplies from their facility. Weapons, computer equipment, construction materials. I have a bad feeling about this. The Order is building something big, and I’ll bet it isn’t good. We need to know what it is and where.”  
  
“I’ll find out.”  
  
“I know you will,” she says gently. “Just… try to leave him in one piece afterwards. We’re going to need him."  
  
“Who did they capture?” Ben asks curiously.  
  
Her mouth quirks in a wry smirk as she steps onto the lift. “You’ll see.”   
  
General Organa had wanted to let everyone else take a crack at the prisoner first, before she risked letting Ben at him. Just in case they wouldn’t be able to put him back together afterwards. It shows in the General’s posture. In the way he is beginning to struggle to hold himself upright in his chair and the way his copper-orange hair hangs limply in his eyes. Food and sleep deprivation were the most basic tricks in an interrogation. It was because they usually worked.   
  
There is a faint bruise blossoming on his jaw and a cut on his lip. Not fresh- probably from the capture. He seems otherwise unharmed.   
  
The room is dimly lit by a single overhead light. It takes a moment for Ben’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. As they do, he studies the man from across the room, trying to figure out just who's so important that General Organa is insisting they handle him with kid gloves. Recognition dawns quickly, with a sort of dull, growing horror. There’s no mistaking that distasteful sneer or those supernaturally blue eyes.  
  
“General Hux,” Ben says, mildly impressed despite himself. Speculation had run rampant all day. The rest of the Resistance base had no idea who they had.   
  
He can see now that it was for good reason.   
  
This was a far better prize than just some First Order officer. Below their Supreme Leader, General Hux was the de facto commander of the enemy’s armed forces. Every First Order ship, every base, every outpost followed his plan of action. Word was that he received orders personally from Snoke.  
  
No wonder his mother had wanted to keep their prisoner in one piece. He knew everything; fleet size, military strength, the position and orders of every First Order ship in the Outer Rim. Cracking him open would be a coup for the Resistance. The thought fills Ben with something that feels shamefully like glee.  
  
“Have we met?” There is a sharp edge in the man’s voice, honed over hours of answering the same questions again and again.  
  
“I’ve seen some your speeches. Very inspiring.” He takes a seat in the metal chair across from Hux and stretches his legs out under the table. “You look much bigger on holo.”  
  
Hux watches him, with a face that looks like he just ate a lemon. “You must be Organa’s son. The Resistance’s pet Jedi. I’m flattered. ”  
  
“You should be. I was sleeping.”  
  
His eyes flick down and up, deliberately slow, taking in Ben’s wrinkled clothes and unruly hair. There’s so much disdain in them that Ben actually feels the vague urge to tuck in his shirt.  
  
“Are you here to read my mind?” Hux drawls, leaning back in the chair. If not for the fact that Ben can sense the exhaustion coming off of him in waves, it would seem relaxed. Insolent. As things are, he suspects the General is just having trouble sitting up straight.  
  
“Yes. Unless you want to make this easy on both of us and just tell me what you were doing on Axaca. Then we could both call it a night,” he offers, sure of the answer already but needing to ask. It wouldn’t be fair if he didn’t ask.  
  
“I’d hate for your time to be wasted. You did go through all the trouble of putting on pants for me.”  
  
“Have it your way,” Ben smiles. “Remember that I did offer.”  
  
He curls one hand in the air between them, just pulling at the loose threads of thought on the surface of the other man’s mind. Nothing violent. Nothing penetrative. Not yet.  
  
There is fear there. More than he expected from the General’s calm demeanor. And embarrassment. He's ashamed to have been captured by an organization he thought of with unconcealed disdain. How could a weak, pathetic little band of rabble-rousers with a base that looked like an intergalactic jumble sale have managed to outsmart him? The thought chases itself around in his mind.  
  
Ben is vaguely insulted. He likes the way their base looks. It's  _homey_.  
  
The General winces as Ben digs into his thoughts, just a bit more roughly than is strictly necessary. He follows that thread of shame and embarrassment, tugging it, unraveling it, until he finds more memories tied to those feelings. They flick past him in a rush. A dressing-down from an older man who looked like Hux. A promotion that should have been his given to someone else. Hux, younger and round-cheeked, pinned to a sparring mat by a larger boy, classmates laughing.  
  
“You ambitious types are all alike,” Ben says, unimpressed. “You live in fear of being measured and found wanting. Why does the thought of not being good enough make you squirm in your seat, General?”  
  
“You’re in my head. You tell me,” he answers, with effort.

“Okay.”

Ben yanks on the thread again, startling a pained grunt out of Hux. He follows the chain of thoughts associated with that gut-twisting feeling of embarrassment until he can latch onto another memory, this one soaked in shame and surrounded by the dim halo of early childhood. Perfect.

There is no procedure for how to do this. He was never taught- just the opposite in fact. He spent a large portion of his youth being taught how to _not_ do this. How to stay in his own head, like a little boy getting his knuckles rapped for not keeping his hands to himself. How to ask instead of just taking. He probably shouldn’t enjoy letting all of his uncle’s hard work go to waste as much as he does.

The technique for prying information directly from someone’s mind is something he’s mostly had to piece together for himself through trial and error. The easiest way, the kid-gloves way, was just to convince them to tell you.

Ben had poured over classified documents from the archives of the old Empire- perks of being General Organa's son- that talked in vague terms about Lord Vader’s methods of _coercion_ and _persuasion_. They never officially used the word ‘torture’. Neither did Ben, officially.

He leans forward in his chair, elbows on the table. His earlier grogginess is gone, washed away by adrenaline, the thrill of pursuit. Ben is more than a little curious to see what was lurking in the dark corners of General Hux’s mind.

Childhood memories, he knew from personal experience, were a goldmine of unpleasantness. The human mind was surprisingly fragile. More impressive men than General Hux had crumbled at being forced to relive, on loop, their first rejection or the death of a loved one.

He pulls this memory to the front of Hux’s mind, letting it leech in a bit just to make sure the General feels every second of it.

A little boy carrying a backpack that was almost as big as he was down the street in an unfamiliar city. He is half-dressed, disheveled, his jacket buttoned up over his pajamas. Following a tall, elegant woman with copper-orange hair flowing loose down her back. The boy is stumbling trying to walk and look behind him at the same time, craning his neck to keep in sight of a tall, white-stone house at the end of the street. Soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms swarm in and out of the house like insects, tossing clothes and furniture out to land in a jumbled heap in the front garden where it will be sold. The woman doesn’t look back once. She holds her head held high, so as not to see the armed guards flanking them. The pair are marched to a waiting hover-transport as people on the street stop to stare and mutter into their hands.

“ _Stop it_ ,” Hux bites out, seething with the ghost of remembered shame. His ears and cheeks are as red as his hair.

“What were you doing on Axaca?”

Doing this always makes Ben feel more calculating, more efficient than he knows himself to be. It’s the one thing he knows he’s best at.

“I enjoy driving a skip loader in my free time. It’s a boyhood dream. Don’t tell anyone. I have an image to maintain.”

Ben hides a smirk behind his hand. That would be _inappropriate._

In Hux’s memory, the woman Ben assumes is his mother struggles to lift a bag into the waiting transport as the soldiers watch, bored. The guards are not there to protect them. One of them, slouching back against a wall, snorts a laugh when the woman’s bag slips out and bursts open on the pavement. The little boy is the only one who moves to help her pick up the mess. In his memory, the child Hux hates these soldiers so intensely that Ben can still feels the echoes of it. He would fight them all, tooth and nail, if he thought he had even a chance of winning. But he doesn’t. He feels helpless. Impotent against armed men three times his size. If his father were there, he would do something, would stop them, but his father isn’t there, it’s only Hux, and he is powerless.  
  
“Who were they?” Ben asks, curious. “The soldiers.”

He leaves the memory to replay itself on loop in the General’s mind. Hux doesn’t answer, leaning back in his chair.

“I can just look, if you don’t want to talk to me,” Ben offers.

Hux glares at him. When he speaks, his voice is bitter. “Republic thugs. My mother was some twice-removed grand-niece of the Emperor. One of his favorites, so I’ve been told. He spoiled her. She had never wanted for anything in her life. When the New Republic came into power, they seized the Emperor’s assets. Confiscated my family’s home. Our credits. _Restitution.”_ Hux says dryly.

“This was before the First Order.” Ben was too young to really remember, but he had heard about it enough times from his parents. How the First Order was formed from Imperial sympathizers, who had escaped justice by going into exile. The General’s file says that he is thirty-five. He can’t have been more than eight or nine in the memory.

“My father and others loyal to the Empire fled to the Outer Rim in a handful of Imperial ships, before they could command them to turn those over too.”

Ben skims the surface of his mind, just brushing at the still-fresh hatred roiling away there. The child Hux would picture some scruffy, ungrateful Rebel boy sleeping in his bed and playing with his things while he shared a crowded bunk on a stolen Star Destroyer with his girl cousins, and he would seethe with anger.  
  
It is, as far as terrible childhood memories go, not the worst Ben has ever seen. There’s a certain pathos to is, but he’s almost disappointed. It’s so… ordinary. He always figured that anyone who had risen to a rank like General in the First Order had to be piles of crazy held together by the starch in his uniform. But there’s no gaping trauma in his mind, no psychosis. Just a spartan, friendless childhood and judgmental, emotionally distant parents. They could start a club.

It’s nothing compared to the horrific training the First Order put their Stormtroopers through in the name of obliterating identity. Ben still had nightmares about some of the things he’d dug out of their minds.

“Poor General,” he says with sticky sympathy, just to be irritating. “Too small to help your mother. Too weak to stop them taking your home.”

“Is this an interrogation or therapy? If you have a point, get to it.” Hux speaks like a man used to having his commands obeyed without question. Maybe on other people it works, but Ben has made a lifetime hobby out of disobeying orders.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize I was keeping you from something important. If you have somewhere important to be, we can reschedule. No?” He offers, all false apology. When Hux doesn’t answer beyond that pursed-lip stare, Ben adds vicious, “Well, look at that.”  
  
Curiosity gets the better of Hux. “What?”  
  
“Nothing’s changed. All that power, all that ambition, and you’re just as helpless now as you were then.”

Hux flinches like Ben has slapped him, but doesn’t respond, glaring at the tabletop like it’s personally offended him.

Finally, Hux says. “Was that the point where I was supposed to fall apart weeping at your feet and confessing all my darkest secrets, or does that come later?” His voice is tart. Round vowels and sharp consonants. “Please be specific. Your technique leaves a lot to be desired.”

 _Your technique leaves a lot to be desired._ Ben huffs a laugh. Hux manages to make it sound lofty, parental, like he’s completing a performance review and is severely disappointed in Ben’s interrogation skills.  
  
“Four out of ten? Definitely will not recommend to future captives?” Ben smirks.

“A four is being generous. You didn’t really expect that to work, did you?” Hux adds, scathingly.

“I hoped it wouldn’t,” Ben agrees, leaning across the table. When the other man looks up at him, curious, he adds, “Then I’d have to stop.”

“Charming,” Hux says. He drags his fingers through his hair, trying to push it back out of his face. “At least you live up to your reputation.”

“My reputation?”  
  
Hux smiles, tight-lipped, like a man playing dejarik who has just seen his opponent make a bad move. “My men have a name for you, Jedi. Did you know that?”  
  
Ben can honestly say that he didn’t. “Should I be flattered?”  
  
“They call you the Butcher of Bespin. They say you went back after the fight was already over and killed the wounded. Every last man. They say you chase retreating ships just so you can shoot them down. That you enjoy it.”


	2. Chapter 2

_“They call you the Butcher of Bespin. They say you went back after the fight was already over and killed the wounded. Every last man. They say you chase retreating ships just so you can shoot them down. That you enjoy it.”_  
  
Hot anger lashes through him.  “That’s a lie,” Ben blurts out before he can think better of it. Before he can remember that he’s the one with the power here and he has no reason to allow himself to be dragged into an argument with this man about _anything_.  It’s sloppy. He’s breaking practically the first unwritten rule of interacting with a prisoner- don’t let them get under your skin. Ben knows this, and he does it anyway.

 “A lie that they call you that, or a lie that you enjoy it?” Hux says, being deliberately pedantic.

 “ _That I enjoyed it,”_ Ben growls.

For just an instant he is fifteen and standing in front of his uncle again, guilt like a lead weight around his neck. ‘ _Why did you do this, Ben?_ ’ Guarded disappointment in Uncle Luke’s eyes while Ben just wants to crawl under the floor and die.

“Is it.” Not a question. Bright blue eyes flick down and Ben realizes that his hand is balled into a fist on the tabletop. Jaw working, he unclenches it.

“You don’t know anything,” he says.

Ben remembers Bespin. Of course he does. It was the reason he rarely went on combat missions anymore, not unless they were desperate. Only when they were desperate. She had never said anything to him outright, but he knew his mother had discretely moved his name to the bottom of the flight call roster.

He had never said anything to her, but sometimes he was grateful.  
  
“I know that our casualty rate on Bespin was eighteen percent higher than average for similar conflicts,” Hux is saying. “Reports said that the stormtroopers sent to clean up after the Bespin Conflict all reported themselves for voluntary reconditioning after seeing your handiwork. You have a reputation for… enthusiasm.”

“Did you know that your men were holding someone I care about on Bespin?” Ben responds coldly. “Did your reports tell you that?”

Hux’s eyes dart back and forth like he’s reading an invisible file. “A Resistance girl? One of Skywalker’s students.”  
  
“One of my friends. Did your men tell you what they were doing to her before I got there?” Suddenly he has a hard time speaking around the bile rising in his throat. He only barely manages to keep from shouting.

“Interrogation,” Hux says simply, with a casual shrug of one shoulder. He has a smug little smile on his face that makes Ben’s fists itch just looking at it. “This is a war, after all.”

The legs of the chair scrape as he pushes away from the table, pacing around it until he can stand behind General Hux, looming over him to growl directly into his ear. He puts one large hand between the man’s shoulder blades. Not pushing, just resting his weight on him.  “ _That’s right_. This is a war, and if I were in your position, I wouldn’t push my luck. You don’t want me getting _enthusiastic._ ”

The General’s fear spikes when Ben touches him, but he makes no response besides a stuttered breath.

“I’m _disappointed_. Your reputation is that you’re _smart_ , General,” Ben adds venomously, returning to his chair. The metal joints creak as he throws himself into it.  
  
It would have been so easy, Ben allows himself to think once he is safely back on the other side of the table, out of range of temptation. To twist his fingers into that short red hair and smash General Hux’s face into the table until he stopped smirking like he’s won something. He pictures it. Imagines the crack of the nose breaking when it hit cold metal and hates the way it fills him with satisfaction. His hands are shaking.

“Careful, Organa,” Hux drawls, eyeing him. “What will mother say if you damage her prisoner?”  
  
“You don’t know my mother, do you? She’ll probably ask me how good it felt to punch the most hated man in the galaxy.”

Hux’s lip curls. “Does the New Republic really think they speak for the entire galaxy now? Typical.” His voice practically drips disdain.

“Only the parts of it that aren’t run by fascist maniacs.”

The General makes a derisive noise in his throat. Ben is far too familiar with the Force-signature of _disappointment,_ and it’s rolling off Hux in waves now.

“You really believe that,” he says, distasteful. “I expected better of you. Clearly I was mistaken.”

It shouldn’t hit Ben like a punch in the gut. And yet.  
  
“ _What_?”  
  
“I’m the enemy because I won’t bow to the Republic. I’m a monster because I oppose them in every way I know how. But my men would say the same thing of you, and of the two of us, I’m not the one with blood dripping from his hands.”  
  
“That isn’t-“  
  
His voice is low, intense, every word precise. “My family had _estates_ before they exiled us the wastelands. Now you destroy and steal and slaughter my men, for the crime of trying to scratch out a place for ourselves apart from the Republic, and you have the nerve to label me the villain? How dare you? You of all people should know better.”  
  
“What are you talking about?”

“The Order aren’t the only ones who are afraid of you, are they? Do you hear the whispers behind your back when you pass by? They’re so quick to judge. You only do what you’re told and they still hate you for it.”  
  
“That isn’t true,” Ben snarls. “You have no-“  
  
“You’re just a weapon to them. An attack dog they only take off the leash when they want to brutalize an enemy. They’ll turn on you too when you’re no longer useful to them.”

“Oh…” Ben breathes, his temper doused as effectively as if someone had thrown a bucket of water over him. “I know what you’re doing.”  
  
“I have no idea what you mean.” Something like panic spikes in Hux. Ben can feel it, and a smile creeps across his face.  
  
“This is a distraction. You’re provoking me. Trying to keep me from looking in your head.”

There is fear in the General’s wide blue eyes and it’s the most satisfying thing Ben has seen all night.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Ben can’t help it, he’s grinning. “Nice try, General. It really was. I can see why they let you make the speeches. But you’re not getting away that easily.”  
  
Hux looks like he wants to murder him.  
  
“Last chance to tell me what you were doing on Axaca. Going once?”

“Fuck you,” he spits. The curse sounds obscene in his rounded, Coruscanti accent.  
  
Ben smirks back. “You’re not my type.”

When it came to the dark side and the light side of the force, skimming the surface of another person’s mind, like dipping just your hands into a deep lake and feeling for whatever you can reach, fell on one side. Not very far into that side, but it was there. It was acceptable. Forcing your own consciousness in alongside someone else’s was like diving in and swimming for the bottom. It fell, according to Uncle Luke, very definitively on the other side.   
  
Normally, pushing himself into someone else’s mind feels like digging his fingers into an overripe fruit. It’s messy and organic. Almost sexual.

Entering General Hux’s mind is more like slipping down a lift shaft, all cold, clean lines and neatly defined spaces. It’s dark, and Ben realizes this is because the General is very carefully thinking of nothing. It takes a huge amount of effort to think of nothing- truly, absolutely nothing. To not allow even a flash of recollection. No reminder to trim his nails, or snippet of a half-remembered song stuck in his head. It must be exhausting, especially for someone who isn’t Force sensitive. He is almost impressed at the effort.

 _Oh, you are good,_ Ben thinks, delighted. _Unfortunately, I’m better._

There were two ways around this kind of rudimentary mental blocking technique.  He could simply push his way through the darkness. He could latch onto Hux’s thoughts and tear them out, messily, one by one, until he found the one he wanted, like picking the petals off a flower. But doing it that way would not, technically speaking, fall under the directive of ‘leaving him in one piece’. The people Ben had practiced that method on in the past still had a tendency to gibber.

He would do it the hard way. Harder for him, anyway. Not that General Hux would appreciate the extra effort.

“Will the Order pay to ransom you, do you think?” Ben asks. “Are you important enough to them? Or have they already picked your replacement?”

Questions begged the mind for answers, thoughts that he would be able to use to orient himself, but there is not as much as a flicker in that cold, dark space. Ben reaches out, careful but just short of gentle, expanding his presence in the General’s mind. Testing the boundaries of it. Hux makes a choked sound in the back of his throat.

What Ben had thought were walls reveal themselves to be smooth, black metal doors. It takes him a moment to realize that they belong to old-fashioned filing cabinets. Row upon row upon row of them, the kind that people used to keep ancient paper documents in. He tugs at the door to one, curious, and is unsurprised to find it locked.

Feeling around in the pitch-black, he discovers there is an opening just to the right of him; a gaping, empty space in the darkness. Ben steps through it, moving carefully until he senses another barrier. More walls. More cabinets.   
  
“It’s very well-organized in here. I’m impressed,” Ben says, unthinking. His own mind wasn't this tidy.  
  
“Thank you,” Hux bites out, insincere. “I do try.”  
  
There is a sharp right angle and the sensation of empty space stretching out ahead of him.

This is ridiculous. He needs to be able to _see._

“It must be embarrassing to the Order, to have someone of your rank captured by the _pathetic_ Resistance.” Ben taunts. A flare of irritation somewhere ahead of him, quickly smothered. He alights on it like a hunting animal catching a scent. “It was a complete accident, did you know that? They weren’t there for you. They just saw the opportunity and took it.” More irritation. Stifled embarrassment. Ben follows them until he sees another wall. Another right turn.

The General is beginning to lose his careful blankness. Thoughts begin to flicker around the far edges of his mind, illuminating the space around him.

More openings branch off, twisting away into the dark space. A maze. His mind is a _maze_ , Ben realizes, delighted and impressed in spite of himself. The level of self-control required to maintain such organization, the sheer pedantic fussiness to even _try_ , was staggering.

“ _Unsurprising,_ ” Hux mutters, through his clenched jaw. “Everything you do is an accident. Every victory you’ve had due to nothing but _chance._ ”

“And yet, here you are.” Ben follows the General’s seething embarrassment like a distant beacon in the darkness. “Maybe the First Order isn’t as powerful as you think.” There is something at the center of this maze. Something Hux is curling all his defenses around, trying to protect from Ben. The deeper he goes, the more detailed the mindscape becomes. He has an impression of his own footsteps echoing on the hard floor as he moves, bodiless, through the space, and of air that smells like the climate-controlled, recycled O2 on a spaceship.

One bright thought, quickly smothered. _Not for long_. Smug, victorious. It’s connected to whatever’s at the center of General Hux’s mind. Ben pushes at the wall of filing cabinets, just to test the resistance there. He could tear them down easily, but he won’t. They need Hux in one piece. He moves on, following the path the General has so thoughtfully laid out for him.

“What are you hiding from me, General?” Ben murmurs, low. It’s a moment before he realizes he’s said it out loud. “You know I’m going to find it. Save yourself the trouble.”

“Then what would I do with my time? I’m so enjoying your company,” Hux bites back, half playful. He is breathing hard through his nose. The strain of resisting, of having Ben inside his head is getting to him. Soon he would start to become confused, to lose identity and his sense of awareness. Their minds would become tangled together, until separating them would require ripping them apart. Ben knew how to protect himself against that sort of damage, but Hux didn’t.

In the mindscape, Ben hits another wall. A dead end. Time to change tactics.

Uncle Luke would never approve of Ben using this sort of trick, but Uncle Luke wasn’t here.

When Ben was younger, he used to play a game with the Resistance pilots. Borrowing fighters for a joyride, racing across the surface of the planet and seeing how close to a cliff side they could fly and still pull up before it was too late. Ben usually won. Everyone said he pushed things too far.

That’s what this feels like. That terrifying, exhilarating moment when the proximity sensors started screaming in his ear and a canyon wall was stretching out in every direction in front of him. How long could he wait? How far could he push it? It was the delicate balance of finding that perfect very last second before he became a messy stain on the planet’s landscape.

How far did he have to go to get the information he needed? How much damage could he do before he broke their prisoner completely?

Ben rips the filing cabinets out of the walls, dumping them out and scattering their contents across the floor. Suddenly, General Hux’s orderly mind is in complete disarray, a tangled mess of thoughts and sensations. Unrelated memories thrown together in the mess. It’s chaos. Confusion. Frantic impulses tossed together with flashes of memory. Fear and excitement and the smell of boot polish. A sunset on an ice planet painting the sky in vivid reds and oranges. A lieutenant’s birthday- a small flashing remember to say something on the date. Hux laughs, sharp and choked, unsure of what’s funny. His thoughts are a jumble. He can’t _think_. Keeps forgetting to breathe.

His grip on whatever it is he’s trying to hide loosens. Ben worries at the edge of it, trying to slide the memory from his grasp without ripping it out completely, but the General has such a death grip on it that he’s afraid just pulling the thought out would tear him irreparably-  
  
Ben races down the empty corridor in Hux’s mind, scattering thoughts and memories as he goes. He picks another cabinet door at random, tearing it out of the wall and upending it all over the floor. Snatches of conversation echo through the space, voices talking over each other.  
  
The General’s grip gives a little more. He’s nearly there, nearly has it-

Ben holds on to the mindscape as he pushes back his chair, walking around the table until he is standing behind him. Hux is clutching at his hair, tangling it, and making strangled pained sounds. He presses his forehead against the cool metal surface of the table as his boots slip against the floor. He’s an absolute mess. Ben places one hand on his shoulder to steady him in the chair. The other palm he lays against the exposed back of his pale neck, the skin-to-skin contact focusing him, letting him push more of himself in.

Hux squirms under his hands, groaning at the feeling of being spread open. It _hurts_. Ben feels the thought flick by as soon as Hux does. Like something stuck in your teeth. Like the worst migraine imaginable. Hux wonders how he can possibly survive this pain.

Ben bites his lip a little, thinking. Every instinct is shouting at him to stop- to pull up now, _right now_ before he went too far, before he crossed that line, but it’s drowned out by that part of him that screams that _he’s almost got it._ He can just make out the shape of the thought in Hux’s mind. A secret project on a planet covered in ice. Something big. Something that filled the General with a glowing combination of terror and pride, like a parent watching their child’s first murder.

He pulls, agonizingly slow but steady. He’s so _close_.

Everything he’s learned has been through trial and error. He can’t afford for this to be an _error._

Gritting his teeth, Ben stirs up the chaos in the General’s mind. Blindsides him with a whirlwind of remembered emotions, battering him with them. The delighted, near-giddy pride from when he made captain, the bone deep fear he felt looking on their Supreme Leader for the first time. Sharp joy at seeing his own command ship for the first time through the viewport of a shuttle. A message from his father, designated low-priority, _your mother died at 0430 last-_

Hands in his hair, a drunken kiss. Bitterness at being rejected by a lover. Sitting bent over his desk with the lights dim, exhausted, but unwilling to sleep when there was so much work to be done on the new base-

 _Starkiller_.

The word slips out of his mind, unbidden.  
  
They are simultaneously in the empty Resistance store-room and in Hux’s memory of his spartan office. “ _What is it, Hux?”_ Ben mutters into the man’s ear, leaning over him from behind. Use his name, not his title- it’s more personal. Comforting. He runs a hand up and down his back, through the starched fabric of his uniform. “It’s alright, shh. What’s Starkiller? Tell me. It will stop if you just tell me.”

A wet sob that might have been a desperate, “ _no_ …“

Ben pulls again, but this time the thought begins to slide. _Starkiller base_ : working compliment 120,000 men. 250,000 droids. Fifteen ship hangers. Ten Stormtrooper barracks completed. Five more in progress. Five floors above-ground, mostly living and administrative, forty floors subterranean. Expansion of the south wing: in progress, on schedule.  
  
Hux standing on an ice planet, the wind whipping at his coat as he watched a massive dark energy containment unit lowered into the ground.  
  
Hux riding in a shuttle, drafting a speech on his datapad. ‘ _This fierce machine which you have built, upon which we stand, will bring an end to the Senate.’_ He backspaces, deleting an earlier section-

“ _How?_ How is it going to destroy the Senate? _Tell me_ ,” Ben snarls in his ear, digging his fingers into the back of Hux’s neck hard enough to bruise.  
  
The memory slips free in a rush. He pulls out of the General’s mind immediately, retreating with his prize. His first reaction is triumph. He did it, he got it, _he's won_.   
  
His second is horror as he realizes just what it is he's uncovered.

Ben is suddenly aware of the blood pounding in his ears and the General’s quiet whimpers. His mouth is dry.

He covers the distance to the door in two long strides and pounds on it. Three sharp knocks.  
  
“Get General Organa,” he says to the guard who opens the door. His voice sounds strange in his own ears. The guard is May Barnard. Ben knows her well enough say hello. “Tell her … the Order is building a superweapon. Something that uses dark energy to destroy entire systems.” He swallows. “Tell her I know where it is.”

May curses and shuts the door in his face.

Ben takes a couple of breaths to steady himself, in and out through his nose. He is in shock, he realizes dimly.

No wonder the General put up such a fight.

No one knew the First Order was capable of this. They _shouldn’t_ be capable of this. Shouldn’t have been able to get the funds to do this. Not without someone noticing. Yet there it was. Every statistic, every budget report, every technical specific kept neat and organized in the General’s tidy little mind. Now it was in Ben’s.

 _Starkiller Base_. The name had to be Hux’s idea. Somehow both precise and overwhelmingly melodramatic.

If the Order had a weapon like that, they could destroy the entire Resistance in one blow and they would never even see it coming. His mother was right- this was bad. This was very bad. Ben balls his hands into fists to keep them from fidgeting.

It wasn’t projected to be operational until next quarter. They could handle this. One problem at a time. He turns back to their captive.

Hux is shaking all over. He makes a low whining sound, his face buried in trembling hands.  
  
“No, look at me,” Ben says briskly, walking around the table to him and slowly forcing his hands down away from his face. His pupils are different sizes, one of them blown so wide the eye looks nearly black. Ben waves one hand in front of his face slowly, watching his eyes. After a moment, they track. “Good. That’s… good. Can you talk?”  
  
“Nnh.”

“Let’s try words. How about your name? Can you tell me your name?”

“Fuck you,” Hux mumbles, his tongue thick in his mouth.

“Close enough,” Ben says.

Hux mutters something unintelligible under his breath. Ben leans in to catch it, “What?”

 “…you could have at least bought me dinner first.” Hux repeats. He lays facedown on the table, his nose crushed into the worn metal, and covers his head with both arms. Ben feels him slipping into unconsciousness.  
  
“Hey, no- stay awake, General.” Ben gives him a gentle shake with both hands on his shoulders. Hux whines. “We need to get you checked over by medical. Then you'll get the best accommodations the Resistance can spare for a prisoner.”  
  
Hux makes unintelligible sounds that Ben feels safe in just assuming are some kind of sarcastic response.

“If you promise me you’ll stay awake I’ll go get you some Comaren for that headache.”  
  
“…fnn-“ Hux says into the table. Ben takes that as agreement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! There may or may not be a follow up in the works with Hux The Snarky Resistance Prisoner.
> 
> The title is from Hamilton. "Try not to crack under the stress, we're breaking down like fractions."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Something I (Really) Didn't Need To See](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10708260) by [MapleLantern](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MapleLantern/pseuds/MapleLantern)




End file.
